I am new to the hobby and trying to build up supplies to do basic maintenance on watches. by basic I mean cleaning and oiling. I am not looking to get real heavy into restoration right now, but I will be wanting to take apart the watches, clean the works and case in ultrasonic, clean the face and reassemble and oil the works. What I am looking for right now are some basic recommendations for the oil I should get that will bbe good all around wristwatch oil. I will be working predominatly on vintage hamiltons (1960's into the 70's) with some timex and a random other thrown in for now. because I am just learning I am buying workin and none working watches on the cheap until I feel more comefortable with disassembly and reassembly. The watches will range from self wide, automatic wind and electric.

I have read the baby jar method that HandyDan uses in the ultrasonic cleaner. My understanding is a jar of cleaning solution and two jars of rinse solution in the ultrasonic cleaner, moving the disassembled parts from the cleaner one jar of rinse and finally to the second jar of rinse solution before drying. First can someone confirm I am understanding that correctly? Second are there any movement parts you would not recommend putting in the untrasonic cleaner (jewels, mainspring, etc.)? finally are there any specific recommendations on the cleaning solution or the rinse solution?

I'm new to the hobby, but not new to owning watches, of course. I've read on these forums that Simichrome is a good polish for watches. Also red rouge polish. I've never used either of these products myself though.

Believe it or not I did use the search feature on the website and found it far less useful than you indicate it will be. I ran a search for "oil" "watch oil" nd "oil recommendations" and while I found several conversations talking about oiling watches and what parts to oil most comments never seem to talk about what oil they use. The same was true of my searches for "cleaning solution" "cleaning" and "ultrasonic cleaning solution". Other than Naphtal and many discussions on cleaning techniques and what not to do I was having a hard time finding anything that actually recommended specific solutions. I did find the thread that you had provided a link to as you may have noted I had the last comment in that thread asking a couple of questions about hand pushers and types of oilers (both of those questions have remained unanswered to date), and while that thread does mention moebius I was hoping there may have been other recommendations from the forum users. I suppose this could be down to my ignorance on how to use the search feature here as often times words in my searches are often omitted as being to vague, ironically this often results in a much more vague search than if the word had been included. (as an example a search for "Hamilton Gary" would be more specific than just a search on "Gary", but "Hamilton is omitted form the search for being too common).

just to clarify, I never use distilled water. I use one jar with L&R non-ammoniated watch cleaner and two jars of L&R watch rinse. I also use "one dip" hairspring cleaner.

A lot of folks use Naptha - which is the main ingredient in white gasoline or camp fuel. I use to just use three jars of that but I was always a little hesitant with it. It's very cheap but you need be very careful with it and not use it indoors. One errant spark and you'll accidentally burn your house down. The L&R product is very good - gets everything bright and shiny. It's flammable too but not as volatile.

As for oil, you don't need much oil at all - barely any in fact. You're just coating the pivots and jewels. A pin-head of oil will do several watches. Follow these instructions for oil types and application.